A statesman forced out by local issues

The timing of Bertie Ahern's departure has as much to do with Europe as events in the Republic of Ireland, which holds a referendum next month to ratify the Lisbon EU treaty. Strategists within Fianna Fáil feared the vote would be exploited by opponents using it as a de facto referendum on the taoiseach's leadership.

Ireland, they concluded, could not afford to lose Lisbon because of the unrelated issue of Ahern's personal finances or the Irish public's anger over his decision last year to accept a pay rise taking his pay to £220,000, making him the best paid leader in the democratic world.

"If we lost Lisbon because of Bertie's personal issues that would be a disaster for both Ireland and Europe, so this move was made in the national interest as well as that of Fianna Fáil," a senior Irish government official told the Guardian.

The irony of Ahern's departure yesterday was that he had just scored a double victory over those investigating his personal finances. On Tuesday in Dublin's high court, Ahern's lawyers won two concessions from the Mahon tribunal, the investigative body he originally set up to investigate Irish political corruption.

The tribunal agreed that their lawyers could not question him on statements he made to the Dáil on the controversy. It also agreed to hand over documents to Ahern's legal team about payments to his accounts and that of his former partner Celia Larkin.

Nonetheless the cloud of suspicion over his financial affairs has been seen as potentially damaging to Fianna Fáil. Ahern became mindful of party concern that he would turn out to be an electoral liability, not only in the Lisbon referendum but also in next year's Irish local and European elections.

The greatest achievement of his almost 11 years in office was his part in the peace process and the Good Friday agreement. Although during the 1997 general election campaign Ahern was accused of beating an Irish nationalist drum by stating he would put the interests of Catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland first, in office he struck up a working relationship with unionists. His commitment to achieving a lasting settlement in Northern Ireland was epitomised on Good Friday 1998 when he flew directly from his mother's funeral in Dublin to take part in final negotiations that led to the Belfast agreement.

The success of the historic compromise between Dublin and northern unionists has also been personified in the relationship between Ahern and Northern Ireland's first minister, Ian Paisley. They have even promised to hold a joint peace service.

But as Mikhail Gorbachev found at the end of the cold war, being hailed as a statesman and peacemaker around the world is no guarantee of domestic survival. It was local political concerns that pushed Ahern out of office.